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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Mad Man's History Lessons: Timeline 5

Karl Marx once said History repeats twice. First as a tragedy, then as a farce. Inevitably, the latter half of History is forgotten. Not so in these lessons, which only addresses the farcical bits. Here's a list of the greatest(?) events of the 17th century.

1605 AD: Gunpowder Plot fails.

1606 AD: For some inexplicable reason, the English start celebrating the Gunpowder Plot failure by blaimg it on Guy Fawkes, and blowing up thousands of tonnes of gunpowder every year.

1614 AD: John Napier invents the Logarithms to simplify calculations. This encourages schools to bring in even more complex mathematical calculations.

1616 AD: Sir Walter Raleigh attempts to write the History of The World when he's imprisoned. Two years later, he loses his head. Literally too.

1623 AD: The first dictionary is published, listing difficult words with definitions. Incidentally, it was titled English Dictionarie.

1632 AD: Construction of the Taj Mahal begins. It was supposedly named after Emperor Shah Jahan's favourite Udupi hotel.

1637 AD: Pierre de Fermat formulates his so-called Last Theorem, which was never solved. Even Napier's Logarithms couldn't help.

1642 AD: Torture outlawed in England. Irish rebellion begins. Historians are still trying to figure if the two are mutually exclusive.

1658 AD: Just after the completion of the Taj Mahal construction, Shah Jahan's son Aurangzeb deposes and imprisons him for exceeding construction budget by over 53 times.

1666 AD: The Great Fire sweeps through the city. Sources claim it all started when one drunk loser thought it was Guy Fawkes day.